I have noticed watching Ros na Rún has improved my Irish but how much could it really help?
Ros na Rún has 82 episodes a series each about 24 minutes long. You could easily watch one a day over about 3 months. But how much could you learn from that?
I extracted the Irish subtitles from one episode and it had 2964 words in it.
Over an 82 episode series that would be 243048 total words. Heap's law says that is about 9860 unique individual words.
'To be familiar with 98% of the running words in a novel or newspaper, you need to know around 8000-9000 different words.' What do you need to know to learn a foreign language? Paul Nation which is less.
Soap Operas are closer to how people talk than the words used in novels. And there is a fair bit of repetition as people spend several episodes talking about the events a hen night or something. But using words again means you are more likely to remember the word. Any decrease in unique words is an increase in the times you hear a word and your chances of remembering it.
It is easy enough to extract TG4 subtitles and audio if needed. Which allows you to recheck and learn any section you found difficult.
'Learn Irish with Series 26 of Ros na Rún' would be an entirely practical 3 month process.
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